


Cheating Death For Dummies: Tony Stark's Overly Dramatic Journey To Escaping The Afterlife

by ElizabethOlsenIsMySpiritAnimal



Series: After Laughter [4]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, Ghosts, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Slow To Update, Tony Stark Lives
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-15
Updated: 2019-10-15
Packaged: 2020-12-16 19:00:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21041162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElizabethOlsenIsMySpiritAnimal/pseuds/ElizabethOlsenIsMySpiritAnimal
Summary: When Tony Stark died during the battle with Thanos, he expected to, you know, die....but, as with basically any other thing a Stark does, nothing is ever simple, so why should dying be any different?





	Cheating Death For Dummies: Tony Stark's Overly Dramatic Journey To Escaping The Afterlife

//

** _(How We Got Here… / My Nap Is Ruined, You Communist Bastards!) _ **

//

It came to an end with a snap.

Now admittedly, it wasn’t _ just _ a snap, that would’ve been of little concern. No, this was _ the _ snap, the snap heard ‘round the world, nay, ‘round the whole damn universe, and frankly, that was understandable, considering that well...said snap had just been used to, in laymen’s terms, _ kick the fuck out of the bad guys. _

And so, with a Snap, but not a crackle nor pop, a very large group of motherfuckers died.

On a ruined, ash-filled battlefield, various alien soldiers found themselves unceremoniously disintegrating in a dramatic moment that would’ve made Voldemort shit his pants in envy, whilst the people they had been trying _ very hard _ to kill watched in astonishment. Somewhere nearby, a purple grape that was the source and center of all the misery that had lead to the aforementioned snap sat down, feeling a sense of sadness and non-accomplishment, and did what he should’ve done a long, long time ago-

-and fucking died.

This passing of the aforementioned grape, however, was not particularly important, considering that well, someone _ else, _ far more important to this tale, was also dying, though not by flaking away like that bald noseless guy who’d somehow failed to take over a fuckin’ high school filled with the Wizards of Waverly Place and then gotten killed by his own spell to boot, which was a truly embarassing thing when one thought about it, but by...well, uh...something painful, something so painful that it was somehow more painful than the undercooked burrito incident that had firmly convinced the soon-to-be-dead guy that he knew what pain was.

And so, Tony Stark collapsed against a wall, breathing heavily.

Everything hurt, in the bad kind of way, which was kind of understandable, given that he had done this little thing called _ wield the forces of the universe as a mere mortal, _ of which he was pretty sure he wasn’t going to walk away from. Though to be fair, it wasn’t like he’d had a lot of choice. For one, he’d been told - via a vague hand gesture - that grabbing the aforementioned universal forces and using them against Thanos was the way to go, and because he _ really _ didn’t have time to consider an alternate method of solving the Purple Grape Problem, he’d gone with it.

Movement in his peripherals caught his attention, and with a little tilt of his head, one that felt like it was taking everything in his body to do it, Tony locked eyes with Pepper Potts-Stark, his wife, the light of his life, the mother of his daughter and-

“Tony...”

-oh hey, so he hadn’t been imagining things when he’d seen something big, purple and ugly go _ woosh _ like a leaf in the wind. Good. Pepper was smiling, a smile he could tell was made up of tears, and definitely not the happy kind. “We’ll be okay.” She whispered, cradling him in her arms as she had done oh so many times before. “You can rest now.” 

Now that he thought about it, he was tired. _ Really _ tired. He was having trouble keeping his eyes open, let alone focused on Pepper, and she seemed to be quite understanding about the whole affair. And so, with a little smile, and one last, fond look at the beautiful woman of whom had been his rock, his salvation, and his guiding light-

-Tony Stark died.

//

It began with the morning sun.

Tony Stark, feeling very much like he’d overslept, which was an entirely oddball thing to be feeling considering that he was pretty sure he was dead and thus not bound to worldly matters like time and schedules, sat up, yawning and rubbing at his eyes. It was time, he figured, to open his eyes and take his first steps into the afterlife, and after a moment spent mentally preparing himself, he did just that.

Well, this was awkward.

Seated on the side of a small stream, Tony looked around, and saw nothing but trees, greenery, and other such things all about him. If this was the afterlife, it was a very poor one. He couldn’t see a single all-you-could-eat buffet, alcohol fountain, Hooters girl, billboard-size TV, karaoke machine, or ostensible _ loved one _ anywhere_. _ If this _ was _ the afterlife, he needed to find a way back or something stat, because frankly, the afterlife _ sucked. _ What was he supposed to do, commune with nature until the universe ended, _ again- _

-it then occurred to the man that there was something bobbing gently in the stream, just by his side.

Looking down, Tony reached out on instinct, pausing for a moment as he noticed that his arms seemed...translucent, almost as if he was there, and yet not there. Shaking it off, he dipped his hands into the cool water and, with a bit of fumbling, plucked the object out. With a flash of recognition, he realized that one, the item in question was his old Arc Reactor, the very same one he’d built in that cave all those years ago, and two, this wasn’t the afterlife.

It really, _ really _ wasn’t the afterlife.

“Oh, fuck.”

//

**Author's Note:**

> If anyone wonders, this is just me screwing around with an idea that grabbed me at three in the morning and I decided fuck it, we'll roll with it, see where it goes, so it's not as...thought out as my usual line of works.


End file.
